Monday 23rd October - day 34. Half Moon Bay, to Alcatraz Island and San Francisco airport. Time to go home. But first some housekeeping and a trip to Alcatraz. We were up at 6am to spring clean the van ready for return. We had hoped for a swim but a glance at the sat nav told us that several road traffic accidents were causing big delays in our journey to the Cruise America depot. We set off and crawled through the traffic to arrive only a little late. We retur...

After another cold night sleeping at 6500ft, we were up bright and early to start the last day of our American adventure. By 6.30 there were already glowing flames and small plumes of smoke rising from campfires next to some of the tents around the forest. As it started to get light, we were on our way by 7 to drive along the Kings Scenic byway to watch sunrise, beat the crowds and get in a final trail run before making a start on our 250 mile journey down to Sa...

Saturday 21st October - day 32. Ridgecrest to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. Well, good old Walmart... we half expected to be woken by a knock on the door from the store manager, but none came and we woke at first light to an almost empty car park and sun streaming through the window (is the weather always this consistently good in America?) We popped into the store to buy fruit (yes - this branch of Walmart sells the kind of fruit you actually want...

Friday 20th October - day 31. Lake Mead to Death Valley. When we pulled into the free camping at the Overton Wildlife Management Area last night, we imagined a secluded backwater with trees, water, wildlife and lots of open space. We were right about all of those, but hadn't reckoned on the railway siding across the road. There seemed to be activity all night but they got to work with a vengeance at 6.30 so we got up and drove on down the lake to find somewhere ...

Friday 13th October - day 24. San Diego - surfing at Tourmaline Beach. Sunset at Torrey Pines Beach. Up at 6.30 to check out of our camp site, ready to surf at Tourmaline Beach (just round the corner from Chris’s flat) by 7. We arrived at what seemed an early hour, to find the car park full and some kern surfers already packing up to leave. The beach was sandy with loads of space and enough surf to please everyone. Chris had produced three surf boards and ...